Elder Scrolls Online

Last night was a truly odd occurrence for me. I played a quick league of legends bots game with friends, and piddled around for a bit in Dragon’s Prophet managing to get level 20. All of this was essentially “busy work” as for my inner circle of friends, the main event of the evening was the Sony Entertainment Pre-E3 stream. After seeing it… there really is not much else I can talk this morning other than just how amazing the show was when contrasted with the Microsoft presentation earlier in the day.

Throwing the Xbone

Thankfully we have a lovely abridged version of the Xbox E3 conference that arrived on YouTube over night so I can link here for you all. Basically the Microsoft conference was a massive improvement over the reveal event and its obsession with television. They actually seemed like they might care about games… but then unfortunately they presented me with a bunch of titles I really don’t care about. All of their big reveals seemed extremely unexciting. While I am watching this I am desperately scanning the list for that one game that makes me want to own a console system.

Out of all of the games shown… the only title that stuck out for me… was Killer Instinct. Don’t get me wrong, the idea of a new Killer Instinct game is pretty massive, as the original one was probably hands down my favorite fighting game ever. I was like a kid in the candy store a few months back when I managed to successfully get the Killer Instinct emulator running and got to revisit the original arcade experience. The problem is I just don’t feel like this is enough of a reason for me to spend $500 on an ugly black box.

Coming away from the presentation I still got the feeling that Microsoft doesn’t really care about games that much anymore. I still feel like they intend this to be some convergence device that causes people to change the way they interact with television. That is fine, but I already have a Roku… and it cost me way less than $500. Most of their killer features just are not that killer for me. I could give a shit about sports, and I never really seriously watch live television. So combined with games I don’t really care about… and making a big deal out of games that have been on the PC for over two years… I just really do not feel like Microsoft’s vision is where I want to be.

The Next Generation

I saw a tweet last night that essentially wondered what it was like to be Sony yesterday, having an entire day to soak in the Microsoft E3 presentation… all the while knowing that you were just about to nuke them back into the stone age. It certainly must have been an amazing day for everyone involved with the PS4 in any way. For as awkward and confusing at times as the Microsoft conference was… the Sony PS4 event was that much polished and keyed to the demographic that matters to them… gamers. There was an obligatory section giving someone floor time from the Sony entertainment division, showing off the movies and music libraries… but every other component of the show was about their serious line up of games.

For as nonplussed as I was about the Microsoft Lineup… I saw game after game that I want to play right now. The Order was this amazing steam punk meets diesel punk meets Victorian monster hunter game. The demo that was shown was an in game engine rendered trailer, and that really doesn’t matter… because it looks far better than most fully CG trailers today. In fact that was a huge theme with the show as a hole. Almost everything took painstaking effort to mention that what you were seeing was in game or in engine rendered footage. The end result is almost movie quality animation and brilliant special effects, there was just an unbelievable amount of eye candy being shown.

The Bumps

This is not to say that the presentation did not have its share of hiccups last night. Ubisoft decided to go completely blind and do their demos as a person on stage actually playing the game. They demoed both Assassins Creed VI and Watchdogs this way… and in both cases… AC especially they had some freezes in gameplay. Watchdogs however that has been in development far longer… had a few moments of slowdown but no lockups. This is the risk of actually doing anything live, because anytime I have had to demo software… it never goes 100% smoothly. I know the feels the guys on stage were going through… so to some extent this softens the blow of the fact that they had lockups.

Additionally there were some pretty awkward presenters… but nothing nearly as awkward as the Microsoft “trash talk” examples… and the really bizarre rape analogy as the man and woman were playing Killer Instinct together. Seriously Microsoft… what made you think it was okay to say something like that? At first I was like man… this is awesome an actual woman on stage playing a game… that is not a super model. Then you reduce her to a whipping boy as some jackass trash talks her and tells her to lay down and it will be over soon? Xbox One: The Console of Choice for Date Rapists everywhere!

Sony: Best Troll Ever

Anyways… essentially none of the bumps in the road for Sony were anything nearly as egregious as what we have seen from Microsoft. The big takeaway for me from the Sony conference is the fact that the games look like they are going to be amazing. Sony took every possible opportunity to troll Microsoft and make them feel bad for their current choices. The above is a great video highlighting one of the biggest features announced last night. Essentially you will be able to trade games for the PS4 the same as you could for any console previously. No awkward restrictions… you can buy used games and swap titles with your friends the same as you have been up to this point.

This is a huge boon for Sony, as the lack of used game support was likely to completely rule me out of this generation of consoles. I hate Game Stop probably more than most people, and I refuse to give them any business at all… however I still buy most of my console titles second hand. Very rarely is there a title for the consoles that makes me want to go out into the store and spend $60 on it day one. Instead I love the scavenger hunt that is going to pawn shops, and more equitable secondhand game stores like Vintage Stock, Game Xchange and Half Price Books. So the ability for a modern console to still give me that hunting for a bargain experience… is a huge boon.

Additionally the PS4 does not require an internet connection to work… however admittedly a lot of the features they were showing off in games were connected features. The console though has been designed to work in a connection agnostic state, which is again is a huge boon for Sony. There is no creepy Kinect eye always watching you, and with the recent flood of security concerns… giving Microsoft a box in your house that was always passively watching what you did was more than a little dystopian for me. I think Sony embraces the concept that actual gamers really don’t care much about minority report gimmickry… they just want to play the damned games reliably.

The biggest troll of the evening however was announced towards the end of the evening. The PS4 looks like a better console in every possible way, and have far better developer support with new and interesting titles. Playstation Plus is still far superior to Microsoft’s crappy gold program.. even after the announcement of getting 2 old titles per month. All of this goodness… and Sony drops the bomb in that it is $100 less than the Xbox One. While still expensive… the $399 price tag, and all the games that I want to play on it… really make this a buy for me. I may not get it new at launch, but I will definitely be picking it up eventually. I almost felt at the end of the night… that Sony should just drop the mic after the announcement and walk away… because they schooled Microsoft in every conceivable way.

Best Thing About The Show

While I am experiencing a massive resurgence of console gaming right now and am really looking forward to the next generation of console games… I am still very much a PC gamer at heart, and namely an MMO Gamer. Last night Sony got a major coup in that they announced that Elder Scrolls Online was coming to the Playstation 4 and would be available Spring 2014. Almost immediately Bethesda started in with the damage control and released the trailer above… showing that it would be coming to PS4, Xbox One, PC and Mac all within that Spring 2014 time frame. Elder Scrolls Online is the game I am looking forward to the most of all the titles on the horizon… and we finally have a projected timeframe.

The new footage looks absolutely amazing, and it includes some really solid first person game play. I’ve never had a problem with the idea of third person… and when playing Skyrim I switch back and forth between first and third regularly depending upon the situation. Having first never really seemed like a must have… but this is a huge boon for the Elder Scrolls purist crowd. Additionally the first person graphic for that Dragon Knight chain attack thingy looked amazing. This only further cements my desire to play one… I want to be Scorpion from Mortal Kombat. I wonder if like WoW… I can find an add-on that says “Get Over Here!” every time I press the attack.

Wrapping Up

I really need to get on with my morning. Today is trash day, and I have to finish gathering it, as well as give my cat some medication… and get on the road. The broad takeaway for the night is that Sony absolutely obliterated Microsoft. There is next to nothing they can do to recover in my eyes from the brutal beating they received at the hands of the Playstation 4. I want to start stockpiling cash now… so that I can pick one up in December when the console launches. I hope you have an amazing day… and I hope I did not offend any stauch Microsoft fans out there.

Today is going to shape up to be a stressful one. My boss overdid it coming back from surgery, and will be out of the office today. As a result I will be acting as his proxy, attending whatever meetings he would have had to attend. The beginning of these is having to lead an 8:30 meeting… so I really have to watch the time this morning as I blog. Once again I am under an NDA as stated last night, so there is not much I can say about what happened last night, save for as to say that it was an awesome evening.

Instant Ports

Over the years in EQ2 travel has gone from something that took large amounts of real time, to something that mostly involves knowing which travel networks connect in which zones. For example I tend to use Enchanted Lands as a switching station, since the Druid Ring, Wizard Spire and Travel bells are all very close to each other. I find traversing zones extremely quick, and so long as you have a base idea of what travel options are available in zones near where you are going you can get there in a matter of a few ports.

Apparently however this was not easy enough. Based on an article I read yesterday, it looks like they will be offering the ability to teleport to one of the travel network destinations from anywhere in the world for an outlay of station cash. This will likely replace the portable travel bells that already exist on the station cash store. The portable travel bells were nice for emergency situations, and this will likely fill the same bill.

I feel like however, this is a change mostly for players without a guild large enough to host the various travel network vendors. Between my port to home city and port to guild hall, it feels like I always have an option to get back to the travel network rapidly. What it also does is make it so that players no longer need to memorize the directory of “connecting flights” that get you from one travel network to another. There are times I cannot remember just which network goes to this expansion zone or that.

Ultimately it will be interesting to see just how much station cash it costs to port like this. I am completely fine with new conveniences, so long as they do not remove the existing networks. Travel after many years arrived at a point where it made quite a bit of sense and that you could pretty much avoid all the boats entirely. I don’t ever want to return to a time when intra-zone travel is a real-world time sink.

Exploration and Crafting

Yesterday Zenimax released a pretty cool video for the Elder Scrolls Online covering the gathering, crafting and exploration systems. The fact that you can loot the barrels on the docks for crafting materials seems cool, but the highlight of the video is that they get close to what looks like a Nirnroot… and it makes the Nirnroot sound. There were so many times I would be wandering across Skyrim, and I hear that sound. and immediately go into find the root mode. The fact that they have carried that sound effect over… gives me hope that all the other little nuanced things will be there as well.

I am happy to see a lockpicking system in the game as well. Even though it looks like the Oblivion system, which I was absolutely horrible at… it is awesome to see it. I am more aligned to the easy mode lock picking of Skyrim and the Fallout games. I love chests in games, and even more so I am excited that they may be difficult to find. I hated that in WoW chests were just thrown out in the middle of nowhere, in places that made no sense to have one. The chest showing up in the hollowed tree in the video seems about right. I am all about games rewarding exploration.

Spam Mail Personified

I saw this video and thought it was pretty amazing… especially when it gets to the point of the fake virus/speed software that takes over your machine. I have had to rebuild our neighbors laptop at least five times because they managed to get that stupid faux virus malware. I remember one time my mom called me, after being 3 screens deep into an obvious phishing site… because it finally sounded strange to her. I told her that if she had already clicked submit a few times, it was all over but the crying. Maybe this will go viral enough to reach our parents and neighbors… one can only hope.

Luchador Power!

I mentioned this the other day, but I am massively hooked on the game Guacamelee!, the exclamation point is part of the name… that is just how awesome it is. Essentially at its core is a Metroid/Castlevania game with Mexican Luchador flair. This is one of the newer cross buy titles, in that you get it both on PS3 and your Vita. Up until this point I really had zero interest in a Vita. Don’t get me wrong I like my PSP, but I rooted it and turned it into a portable emulation machine, since that was a far more compelling use than the games actually were.

Also of note… Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is my favorite game of all time. The fact that I could be playing Guacamelee! on a portable device has done more to make me lust after the Vita goodness than anything has to this point. Additionally my little inner circle of friends has been going on and on about Persona 4 Golden… I will admit I am also curious about that madness.

Now I will begin my search through craigslist for a used unit… because I just cannot ever bring myself to pay full price for a new console when there are so many used ones out there in need of good homes. They totally need to make gaming adoption commercials… with Sarah McLachlan shaming us for even existing and not giving all our money to all the consoles. I have 3 rescue cats and 3 rescue ferrets… and still I cannot bear to watch those commercials… just think what it will do for gaming consoles.

Responsible Adult Time

So I need to wrap up this madcap episode of “Bel finds shit to talk about that doesn’t break and NDA!!!”. Just think you are going to get several more of these since I am under NDA until at least Monday. I need to go finish getting ready, gather some breakfast, and arrive at the office with enough time to print all the things and mentally prepare myself for the super important meeting. There are days I hate being a responsible adult, but there comes a time when you are actually though of as a leader in your organization… which scares me. I hope you all have a great day… one that doesn’t involve you being responsible!!!

This is the sixteenth post in my experimental “post every morning” scheme, and it represents the first true roadblock. Up to this point, I had been posting about whatever was happening in my life, and namely whatever games I played the previous night. The problem I have right now is that while I have plenty of awesome things to talk about from last night, I can’t speak a word about any of it. I may or may not be under a pretty sizeable NDA. So as a result I will be trying to find interesting things to talk about otherwise.

Player Taxonomy

I was having a discussion the other day with a good friend and we got into the whole dividing players into groups concept. We often times have this notion that players are either hardcore or casual, and depending on which side of the divide you are on that other term becomes a slur against what you don’t enjoy. He presented an interesting take on the divide, in that players are made up of multiple parts of different drives. He broke things into 3 drives, but I have since expanded it into 4.

Casual – These players tend to play games on a very peripheral level. They may play multiple titles, but not really get heavily involved in any one game. They do not perform large amounts of research, even if it is a game they play very often.

Core – These players tend to get extremely invested in one or more games. They may play multiple titles, but are more likely to dig into the theory and gameplay of one specific game. They are likely to do large amounts of research on technique and related information.

Social – These players tend to be focused on the social aspect of gaming. They are in games because their friends are playing them. Their gaming experience revolves around interaction with their friends, and if enough of a critical mass of their community leaves the game they are likely to do so as well.

Solo – These players tend to prefer to do things alone, and while they may associate with communities they do so mostly for the benefits that being a member provides. They will participate in group activities if there is a large benefit to doing so, but afterwards they often wander back off to doing solo content.

Essentially the theory is that we are all made up of these building blocks. For example I tend to be Social-Core by nature in online games, but I will have large periods of being Solo-Core depending on if I am playing a game with a preformed community or not. I crave the social connection of a community in an online game, however in the absence of it I tend to withdraw and not reach out to strangers. I have tried to be Casual about games in the past but it rarely works, as I almost always end up digging deep into the minutia, figuring out mob spawn patterns, what the best drops are, and which areas I should be hunting.

There is a line of thinking that says that labels in gaming are a bad thing. I agree to some extent, because the old social versus hardcore debate only really tells part of the story. However the truth is that different kinds of players are motivated by different forces. We need some kind of judgment free taxonomy to help understand what kind of a player someone is, and what they are looking for out of the online gaming experience. I cannot claim the above is a new idea, as I got it from a conversation with a friend… and he cannot claim his ideas are new either because this is something that has been kicking around in the marketing side of the industry for several years.

I feel these building blocks do a pretty good job of modeling opposing forces, namely social tendencies versus solo tendencies, and casual tendencies versus core tendencies. All that said I feel it is totally viable for someone to be social-casual-core striking a balance between really digging into a game and playing them on a superficial level. The thing I have noticed over the years, is that most of the players that claim to be casual… myself included really dig deep into whatever game they happen to be playing. They just may play lots and lots of games at the same time or serially. I think it is an interesting discussion at least, and as a guild leader I have always tried to understand the drives of the people that I am trying to mold towards a specific goal.

Journey to Coldharbour

With all my personal posts and game log type posting, I have not had a chance to really mention this. At the beginning of the month Zenimax released this video about Coldharbour the domain of Molag Bal. I have to say right off the bat the footage from the video looks amazing. I think it is awesome just how vastly different Coldhabour looks and feels from Deadlands the Oblivion plane belonging to Mehunes Dagon we experienced in Elder Scrolls VI: Oblivion. It seems like the Dark Anchors that are mentioned are going to be similar to the Mehunes Oblivion gates.

I really look forward to seeing how all of this will really work in game play. It seems like the anchors drop down from the sky, so I am wondering if they will be “Rift like” events that occur around the map, or static spawns. The Elder Scrolls games have always had a certain measure of dynamic content, so it would be cool if the Anchors were this games answer to “Rifts”. There really isn’t enough in the video to really make a call one way or another, but it is a super cool concept. Every time they release one of these videos, I just want to play ANY Elder Scrolls game I can get my hands on. Why hullo there Skyrim!

Wildstar: Devspeak Movement

So I am still on the fence about whether or not I care about Wildstar. Firstly I have not had a great track record with me trying to get deeply involved in any Science Fiction based MMO. They are awesome for awhile, but they seem to lack the stickiness with me that fantasy MMOs have had. Secondly no matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to view this as anything other than a much higher resolution World of Warcraft. There is a moment in this video that I immediately thought the guy was falling into Area 52 out in Netherstorm. All of that said, the game does look much nicer in every department than WoW.

Range of motion in a video game is a huge thing. If the combat animations feel clunky, the combat itself will feel clunky… as goes with the jumps, rolls, running animations etc. This is a beautifully animated game, and the video really showcases that. The big take away I always have from one of these videos however is just how amazing their Marketing and Communities are at engaging the public. They do a phenomenal picture of painting a picture of the game and setting up an attitude that makes you want to play it. I feel like this is going to be one of those titles that I will need to play before I can decide if I am going to look into it very seriously.

Aatrox, The Darkin Blade

Another nifty tidbit of information from yesterday, is that Riot games announced their next champion for League of Legends. Basically it looks to be a badass AD melee character with life draining abilities. Similar to Mordekaiser he uses a health spending mechanic to cast abilities. You can click the picture, or this link to see a full breakdown of his abilities. At first glance he kind of feels like a fusion of Mordekaiser and Zac, so will be interesting to see how he plays.

Initially I thought… hell yeah, badass demon dude with a molten sword and wings! But ultimately I am really not sure if this is a “Bel” character or not. So far I have not really enjoyed playing Mordekaiser, because his mechanic feels super “fiddly”. I don’t really like champions that are very “do this one thing, so you can do this other thing or you die” in their ability set up. I admit it, I am totally a barbarian and like simple gameplay… think Garen, Wukong and Darius. When I play a game, I am about as subtle as dropping a piano on someone. I feel like even though he looks awesome, and I like his abilities (other than the health spending mechanic) he will definitely be a “try before I buy” character.

Adventures in Legally Viable Posting

So I have managed to weave together a post this morning after all, and this makes me happy. I was afraid that my certain restrictions would dry up the well of rambling, but I have managed to grab a few things I thought was cool out of the air and cram them into a single posting. Not that my nightly rundown posts are all that exciting in the first place, but hopefully folks won’t mind these posts every now and then when I am bound not to talk about the previous night. I hope you guys have a great Friday, and that it is the gateway to a really amazing weekend. We are going to be super busy this weekend finishing up the game loft, so wish me luck!

Yesterday was a fairly stark contrast to Saturday, but a pretty welcome one. After milling around the house and blogging, and my wife doing the same we decided to embark upon a journey to Joplin. We didn’t really make it out of the house until around noon, but by then the 50* temperature had warmed into the high 60s making my choice to wear shorts more justified.

Cameras at the ready

We brought with us our cameras, but they did not leave the car for the most part. We roamed around for a few hours but didn’t really find much of anything up there that “inspired” us. It had been a few months since our last trip to Joplin, so we had plenty of things to do as we ran around town. But for whatever reason, each time we talked about stopping and roaming around, we were both decidedly meh on the topic.

I feel like at some point we need to take a trip to a nature preserve or something of the sort. That seems to be what both of us are leaning heavily towards wanting to shoot now. The recent round of thunderstorms has finally caused Oklahoma to green up, and I think both of us want to take pictures of that before summer starts to brown it again. We have a list of places that we have talked about, but honestly we need to just do it. Our problem yesterday was that our default weekend shoes are sandals, which are not exactly conducive to stomping through the weeds.

Return to Moriban

When we finally made it home for the evening I contemplated jumping back into the Neverwinter, but all day I had thought about how much fun I was having with the new build in Rift. I am super glad that I did, because a short while after logging in one of my favorite people showed up. Plasmodia is like this friendly mad scientist, and one of my highlights of playing Rift with Machiavelli’s Cats. Her and her husband Marklaar were both super awesome people to hang out with, and apparently had missed me.

So over the course of last night I hung out and chatted, and generally did not pay much attention to what I was doing. This is a good thing when a game supports this. I happily ground my way through packs of mobs, loosely following whatever objective was highlighted on my minimap. I generally tend to play really poorly when I am chatting with someone, as a result I used to run laps in Dalaran while I had to talk to someone for any length of time.

That “Rift” Moment

I am no stranger to doing stupid things, but at one point last night it was getting a bit excessive. I was absolutely getting my ass handed to me, enough that I was starting to question this new miracle spec I had stumbled into. It was round about this point that I remembered… I have experienced this before. Sure enough I looked up at my buff bar and noticed that not single one of my 9 buffs was currently active. Upon cycling through the buffs it was like I was a whole new person once more.

I would love to say, that this was the first time I had encountered this problem. However anytime I go back to Rift for awhile, I ultimately end up running around like a buffless noob. I’ve heard that there are mods that will remind you that you are “naked”, so I guess it might be time for me to investigate one of those. Overall though I had a blast just hanging out and chatting, and while I was on guild chat seemed to liven up.

Small Group of Friends

I had noticed that Alea Iacta Est Rift was certainly more quiet than I remember, and last night talking to Plas I found out the reasons. Turns out that a good chunk of the AIE/Cats folks wandered off into Defiance and are happily shooting mutants there. Luckily I was able to play enough of it during Alpha and Beta to realize that it really was not the game for me. As much as I love the concept of a Science Fiction MMO, the result never ends up being something I really enjoy… at least for any length of time.

Another issue that is going on right now is that it seems the officery types are AWOL as well. I have a feeling that some of the Defiance folks will be burning out on the game, as a good number of individuals on my twitter and google plus feed already have. My hope is that some activity in Rift will draw them back. Plas and I plotted to start doing Wednesday night dungeon groups, and I believe we will be having the first of these this week. Right now that is likely going to be me, Plas and her hubby Mark and then anyone else we can tempt from the guild. If you play on Deepwood and are super good natured, and friendly to absolute nubitude… look me up.

Beauty of Dawn

Beauty of Dawn – Malukah – Elder Scrolls Online

So in a completely different direction, I had to post this. I seriously cannot go a single day without listening to it. This is Beauty of Dawn, a song by the already famous Malukah that apparently she teamed up with Zenimax Online Studios to create. From my understanding, she wrote this song after an extended play test of Elder Scrolls Online. Whatever the inspiration, it is completely amazing and so rich and evocative. The song just feels laced with lore, and hopefully when the game releases we will understand all the things she is talking about.

If you could not tell, I am kinda a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls Setting. I first got into them with Daggerfall, and have been a rabid consumer of all things Tamriel ever since. There have been so many times while playing Oblivion and Skyrim, that I thought to myself… man this would be really amazing if I could just play this with my friends. My hope is that Elder Scrolls Online ends up being just that… Skyrim with friends. I realize there are certain MMO trappings that you have to have to make the genre survive, but so long as the core gameplay translates I will be happy.

This is day four of my experiment, and if you have made it this far I want to thank you for reading. The daily posting thing is still not extremely comfortable, but I look forward to doing it each morning. I find sitting down and rattling out my thoughts relaxing. Hopefully over time, it will even be useful to the community… though I sincerely doubt that. This is going to be an insanely busy week at work, so I think I will need this little morning sanctuary to keep me sane. Hope you guys have an awesome day, and awesome week if you don’t check back in before then.